End of the Road, Nebraska

Coffee filled the small white cup on the aging diner table. The woman who was pouring it, Jennifer --as her name tag told me-- smiled at me. I hadn't been looking at her, but I somehow felt this and gathered the courage to look up. She was beautiful. She had long, dark brown hair, practically black, set in a ponytail. Her eyes were equally dark, and full of complexity. I was able to read warmth, sweetness, but also hurt, in those eyes. I could tell already that she had had some tough times. Her face was soft and flawless, and her teeth pure white and straight, but there was pain in her eyes. I smiled back at her, and she seemed to take this as a sign of life.

"Here you go, handsome. Looks like you need some more coffee tonight."

I knew she was lying, about the handsome part, I mean. I certainly wasn't handsome, I don't think. But it made me feel good anyway, even if she probably called every guy who came into the place "Handsome." Waitresses work on tips, after all. Might as well make the sorry sacks who wind up in late-night diners like this feel a little good about themselves.

I had driven halfway across the country in about five days, and I couldn't seem to get away fast enough. Tuesday I had shown up for work, put in my 9 hours, and, instead of returning home, began to drive. I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to confront my wife. I just wanted to get as far away from my life as possible.

Cheryl and I had dated through most of high school, and we were married about a month after graduation. I got a job at a mustard factory in town. They didn't just make mustard; they made some other condiments as well. But I was assigned to the mustard line for the entirety of my employment there. Cheryl began taking college classes, earning an Associates degree in Business. It was enough to get her a low-level job at an office a few towns away. This low-level job eventually turned into a well-paying, middle-management job. As for myself, I couldn't seem to get a break, and wasted away for years in that factory. I didn't feel particularly threatened that she made so much more money than me. We had done this together, after all. I worked, she took classes, and here we were. All the money went into the same pool.

But now, at thirty-five years of age, I found myself escaping from a failed marriage. It wasn't officially over, and I still had the ring in my wallet, but, for me, seeing those e-mails on her computer, and then the videos stored in what she thought was a great hiding place on her backup hard drive, I felt like the final nail hadn't just been driven into the coffin, it had been fired out of a cannon into the coffin.

I'm getting a little ahead of myself, though. For the last eight months or so, Cheryl had become suddenly distant. For years, we had been fine, despite how unbalanced our careers and incomes were. She still loved me, I guess because I was good to her and didn't get jealous that her career was on such a good path while I came home reeking of the factory. But within a short period of time, all that stopped. She pulled away from me, emotionally and physically. The sex, which was already pretty infrequent, stopped entirely. She slept as far away as she could on the bed. She avoided my embrace, withering as if my arms and hands were made of poison.

I didn't know it at the time, but she had gotten emotionally involved with one of the managers in her company. He was a few levels above her, I believe. I don't know the hierarchy at the company very well, but I remember her speaking of him as if he were practically running the company himself. It all seemed to fit together after the fact, but, although I had suspicions, I really hadn't seen it coming.

Five months earlier, she had impulsively bought one of those video cameras that allows you to quickly upload the files to the Internet. When I asked her what she wanted one for, she mumbled something about wanting to capture videos of our dog, Sam. However, I never once saw her use that camera to take videos of the dog.

No, the first time I saw what the camera was being used for was when I found the files on her computer. I was feeling particularly depressed on Monday and decided to take a sick day. The stress of my marriage problems was contributing to a monster case of insomnia, and not long after she left for work, I noticed that she had left her laptop behind. I left it alone for an hour or so, figuring that she'd probably come back for it, but when I realized she probably wasn't going to return for it, I decided to do a little snooping. I felt somehow that the answers I was looking for were on that computer.

The videos and copies of her e-mail and chat logs were contained in a folder called "Sam" on her E: drive. The e-mails revealed an affair that had begun around the time she began acting strangely to me. At first, the e-mails (she had kept ones she had sent to Bill, the upper-management guy she was seeing behind my back, and ones that Bill had sent to her, if they were particularly memorable) told of their mutual longing for each other... things they wanted to do with each other. Then, at a certain point, they began talking of how much they had enjoyed a little tryst at a local motel. Then something about a conference they had gone to in March. Apparently she was getting into rough sex, which I had never done with her. Or anyone, for that matter, as up until that point she was the only person I had ever been with.

The e-mails already summed things up for me. But then I began to browse the video files. Most of them that she had sent to Bill --for some reason she didn't erase her own-- would start with her standing in our bathroom, wearing some sort of outfit she never wore for me anymore, and she would begin stripping off her clothes and then fingering herself. Sometimes she would sit on the toilet, spreading her legs and holding the camera only inches from her vagina. I could hear the wet squishing sounds it made as her fingers penetrated her. It had been years since she had ever gotten wet for me before I would actually be inside her. Despite my efforts at pleasuring her beforehand, usually it was like shoving myself through sandpaper until her biology took over and she would be lubricated enough for enjoyable sex. I guess maybe this is evidence that she had long lost any desire for me, and that the writing was on the wall for years.

She really seemed to enjoy these video sessions. The files were stored in the order in which they had been recorded, so I could see her get more and more bold as the weeks and months went on. Soon she was shoving objects inside her, or fingering her ass. The strange thing is, even though I had seen her naked so many times in our years of marriage, I was getting aroused watching these videos. This was a highly sexual side of her I had never seen. She resembled a porn starlet, cooing and moaning for her Bill as she slid her dripping fingers in and out of her vagina. I wondered if she had recorded any of these while I was home.

I only briefly viewed the ones Bill sent her, just to see what I was "competing" with. He had recorded his videos in the bathroom as well, with closed doors, so I imagined he was probably married as well. He was much better looking than me, with a perfect head of hair and a muscular frame. The bathroom was all marble and granite or whatever materials rich people have in their bathrooms. Very stylish. That bathroom screamed, "I'm successful!" Even the fixtures made me feel poor and inferior. Shit, I thought. There is just no way this situation is going to end well.

I didn't say anything to Cheryl Monday night. I sipped a beer --something I usually only drank when with friends-- and watched TV, while she read in the next room. At one point, she got up and walked to our bedroom, and then to the bathroom. I imagined she might be retrieving her camera and then going to record another video for Bill, so I slowly crept up to the bathroom door. I couldn't hear anything. I lay on the floor and looked between the bottom of the door and the floor, which was a space of about an inch. I could see her feet. She was sitting on the toilet. But her feet were moving rhythmically, and I knew she must be masturbating. After a minute or so, I heard her say something in a low voice, but I couldn't make out what it was, and then she placed the little camera of hers on the floor. She sat on the floor, legs open, in front of the camera, and I watched for a few minutes as she fingered herself for her audience of one. Audience of two, that night. I then wished that I had posted all those videos to a public site, so she'd have an audience of thousands. Maybe even some of her co-workers, people who she ruled over at work, would have gotten a chance to see Cheryl Somers, the accounting manager at the office, moaning into the camera and then moving it to a close-up view of her spread vagina, lightly wreathed in glistening, wet pubic hair. That would have shown her.

But I'm a coward. I watched her for a few minutes, wishing that she would have shared this secret sexuality of hers with me while there was still time to repair what had undoubtedly gone wrong in our marriage. She barely ever let me finger her or taste her anymore, something which she knew I enjoyed doing. How long had she hated me, I wondered. I couldn't even get aroused at this sight. I just felt pathetic at what I had been reduced to, watching my wife, my high school love, masturbating for some other guy, while I lay there with my face to the floor, looking beneath the bathroom door. Like some sort of pervert. My wife. She should be doing these things for me, I thought.

My marriage was over. I knew that for sure when I saw the e-mails and videos earlier that day, but the events of Monday evening cemented it beyond any doubt. I considered many options: various ways of confronting her, writing her notes and then leaving, showing up at her office and making a scene, etc. But in the end, I decided I would simply take what I needed and just leave. My job wasn't much, anyway. It seemed like it would be easy enough for me to start all over again far away from New Hampshire.

So this is what brought me to a humble diner somewhere in Nebraska. The biggest problem I was facing at the moment was that I had not taken nearly enough cash with me. I took what I could from the house, but it wasn't much. I had only spent two nights at motels, and that was mostly because I needed to shower. I was living out of my car, but I hadn't taken much in the way of supplies or clothing. This is something I had not planned out very well.

I had a Mastercard in my wallet, from a shared credit card account with Cheryl. I avoided using it as much as possible --except once early on for gas, and later at a market for some food supplies-- because I figured she would cancel it soon. But tonight I was just about out of money, and I desperately needed to keep what I had. For what, though? It wouldn't make much difference. Pretty soon I would be out of gas and stranded, with no job, no home, not even a way to get back to New Hampshire if I became desperate enough to want to crawl back to my wife.

I had not taken this into account when I entered the diner, but now my face was growing flush as I debated myself on whether or not to attempt a credit card transaction. She's probably cancelled it, and she'll know where I am anyway once I attempt to use it, I thought. And I'll be stuck here because I don't have enough money to keep driving, so I'll be easy to find.

There had been customers here earlier, but they had all left. I was the only person in the diner other than Jennifer the waitress, and some unseen cook who was scraping something --probably a grill-- in the kitchen. Jennifer was standing by the counter, looking at me and then at nothing in particular, and eventually she came back over to me. I hadn't said much to her, except to order. I watched her, though. I got annoyed when a trucker who was in here earlier made sexual remarks to her and tried to grab her butt, and I saw her attempt small talk with a businessman who seemed uninterested in small talk. But mostly I just watched how she moved, how she poured coffee, how the uniform --a white blouse, matching skirt, and apron-- clung to her curves as she passed my table. This wasn't something I normally did, staring at women I didn't even know, but I felt drawn to her somehow, and she seemed like an angel forgotten on earth and forced to wait tables for a living.

"You from New Hampshire?," she said to me, her sweet, lightly-accented voice barely above a whisper, despite there being no other customers at the moment.

"Um... yeah, I spent my whole life there," I said.

"Spent? You don't live there now?"

"Well, yeah... no... actually, I just left there Tuesday."

"Are you moving somewhere?" Now she was standing next to my table, coffee pot in hand. Probably trying to pass the time, I thought.

"I don't know. I haven't really thought it out." I realized I was being very vague in this conversation. She responded with a puzzled expression. Her eyes sort of squinted. They were still beautiful. Maybe she thought I was running from the law or something.

"It's a long story," I added, "You don't want to hear it."

Jennifer glanced back at the kitchen --I imagined that maybe her boss was back there-- and then she turned back to me, and gingerly sat down across from me.

"I've got time, sugar," she said, and I suddenly felt a warmth that I hadn't felt for a long time. I guessed that maybe it was that this was the first time a woman, a particularly attractive woman, had paid much attention to me in a long time.

"On Monday, I found out my wife was cheating on me."

Jennifer's mouth opened in a gasp, and there was a mix of surprise and genuine sympathy in her eyes.

"How did you find out? Did you walk in on them?"

"No... I found files on her computer. E-mails. Video files. It was some guy at her office, an upper management type."

"If you don't mind me asking, what was in the video files?" She seemed really interested.

"I... I shouldn't tell you. It's kind of inappropriate."

"Well, I don't mind. I've heard and seen it all, I think."

"They were videos she recorded herself, in the bathroom."

"Using the toilet?" she asked, amused.

"No. She was... um... satisfying herself, and talking to this guy, Bill, that she sent the videos to."

"Bill isn't you?"

"No, my name is John."

"It's good to meet you, John. I'm Jennifer," she reached out her hand, and I shook it. Her skin was soft, her hand warm.

"It's good to meet you, too. Um... well, the videos got worse and worse over time, lots of stuff I never saw her do before. Stuff she'd never do for me, not in a thousand years."

"So what did you do? Did you say anything?"

"No, I didn't know what to say. Things had been deteriorating for so long already that it didn't seem like I could do or say anything. It was inevitable. If I hadn't found the files, she would have kicked me out or divorced me soon enough anyway."

Jennifer stared at me for a while. I initially felt uncomfortable in her gaze, but I began to stare back.

"So you came out here?" she said, finally. "Do you have family out west?"

"No, I don't have anything out here. I just drove. I just got away. And now I'm here, and I don't think I can go any further."

"Why not?"

"I don't have any money. If my credit card is cancelled, I'm not sure I can even pay for my meal."

Jennifer pursed her lips and continued to look at me warmly. I could tell she was thinking pretty hard. I hoped she wasn't going to kick me out. After a lot of hesitation, and some false starts at responding to me, she finally said, "I don't usually do this. I don't ever do this. But there's something about you, and I haven't quite put my finger on it yet. Are you going to be around here in an hour?"

"Probably. I don't know where to go." I wasn't trying to sound like a pitiful, lost puppy. I just felt like I was at the end of the line.

"Do you have anywhere to stay? Anywhere to sleep?"

I hesitated for a moment. I wasn't sure where this was going.

"No," I said.

"Listen... feel free to say no. And, like I said, I don't ever do this. But I've had a run of bad luck lately, so I don't really want to be by myself when my shift is up. If you'd like to come to my place, I could give you a bed to sleep in and maybe a shower and a hot meal."

My mouth was agape. I wasn't sure what exactly she was proposing, but it sounded like a nice place to be.

"Sure, if that's okay with you."

"You're not dangerous or nothing, are you?" she said, winking at me.

"No, I'm actually pretty boring." I said, and she giggled.

For the next hour, I sat there, my heart racing. I continued to watch her, the way her butt moved when she walked, the way her eyes kept glancing at me when she had a chance, the little smiles when she saw that she had been caught looking at me. I couldn't understand why she would be making a big deal out of me, but it made me feel good for the first time in months. Maybe years.

Eventually the day shift waitress showed up, and soon after that Jennifer emerged from the kitchen wearing a light jacket and carrying a pocketbook. She signalled to me that it was time to leave, and I got up.

I fumbled through my wallet, which was now mostly composed of wrinkled one dollar bills. She put her hand over mine.

"Don't worry about it, hon," she said to me, standing very close and looking into my eyes, "This is on me."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure am," she winked at me again. I was melting in her presence.

We walked outside and I wondered where her car was.

"I usually walk home. My apartment is only a mile or so down the road," Jennifer said, as if reading my thoughts. "I don't have a car. I used to, but I couldn't keep up the payments."

"That's okay. We can take mine," I said, and I unlocked the passenger side door for her.

"Thanks, John," she said in that sweet voice of hers. I didn't know where this was going, but I was just glad to be with her at the moment.

We soon arrived at her apartment building, which looked like a motel, and not a very good one. I suddenly felt worried for Jennifer, living here on her own in this place. It didn't seem safe.

Her apartment was sparsely furnished but well-kept. She walked in and put her pocketbook on the table. "You want some orange juice?" she asked, walking into the small kitchen.

"No thanks. This is a pretty nice little place."

"Really?" she said, "I thought you'd think it's a bit of a dump."

"No, I like it. It makes me feel comfortable. I feel at home, I guess."

Jennifer emerged from the kitchen and smiled at me. "You wanna sit down?"

"Sure," I said, and sat myself down on the couch. She walked over with her orange juice and sat beside me, very close. Her bare legs were touching my pant legs. "You can take those shoes off, John," she said, and I complied. I hoped my feet didn't stink, but I was pretty sure I was okay.

Immediately after I took my shoes off, she touched my feet with hers. We were both in socks, but I felt the warmth of her foot against mine. When I didn't pull my feet away, she got a little bolder and began to stroke my feet with hers. I began to get aroused at this contact between us. While she did this, she said nothing, but she sipped her orange juice and seemed to try to read my face.

"I really don't ever do this, but I thought you looked like a nice guy. I thought you looked... safe."

I smiled, saying nothing.

"I know I've said that a few times, that I don't ever do this. I just don't want you to think that I'm a whore or nothing."

I was puzzled. Where was this going?

"I've had some rough times. I have. I've got a son... he's seven years old. And he lives with his grandmother because I couldn't take care of him properly. His daddy didn't stick around for very long. I was a bit of a mess for a long time. But I've been trying to get back on my feet, and I've been doing pretty well the last few years."